At the dawn of the 20th century, when 8.5
million blacks constituted about 12 percent of the population of the United
States, according to the distinguished black scholar, William Edward Burghardt
(W. E. B.) Du Bois, "not a single first‑grade college in America
undertook to give any considerable scientific attention to the American
Negro."1Yet between 1897 and 1903, the Department
of Labor, then an agency without Cabinet status and forerunner of the present
Bureau of Labor Statistics, published
nine investigations,
of varying length, importance, and point of view, about the condition of blacks
in America. Du Bois himself prepared three of these studies. When, in 1906, Du
Bois prepared another study for the Commissioner of Labor which he considered
his finest sociological work, it was destroyed, willfully, according to its
author. The fate of this 10th and last study raises fascinating questions.

These Department of Labor studies were
closely related to the historically more famous Atlanta University
publications. The first and the last departmental investigations were done by
Atlanta University, and though other studies were independent, the relationship
with Atlanta University was close. Both the Atlanta and the Department of Labor
investigations were among pioneering "scientific" studies of the condition of
blacks in America, and differed from the popular and primarily inspirational
conferences at Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes which were "propaganda for
social uplift."

The cast of characters in the drama of black
studies at the Department of Labor was large. The stars were Carroll D. Wright,
the distinguished Commissioner of Labor from 1885 to 1905; George G. Bradford,
a forgotten pioneer of both the Atlanta University and Department of Labor
studies; and W. E. B. Du Bois, the brilliant scholar later turned militant
propagandist. Also important was the dramatic and ambiguous role of Charles P.
Neill, who was trapped by the great racial crisis at the time he succeeded
Carroll Wright as Commissioner of Labor. Was he, as Du Bois implied, the
villain? Or more important from the view of public policy, do his actions point
to the need for protecting men of basic integrity from social and political
pressures?

The origin of black studies

The origin of objective black studies is
obscure, but scraps of evidence, though inconclusive, are intriguing. When
Congress was debating in 1884 whether to create a Bureau of Labor, several
newspapers commented on the fact that the bill failed to authorize the
Commissioner of Labor to study conditions and employment of blacks. Senator
Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire, though friendly to black aspirations, objected
to special black studies because "there are no distinctions of race or color in
the eyes of the law." Study of the condition of "the colored man is as much
covered and protected by the scope of the bill as is the white man." 2

There is some evidence that when Carroll
Wright came from Massachusetts to head the newly created United States Bureau
of Labor in 1885, be planned a large-scale study of black workers. Wright,
earlier in his career, had investigated the conditions of blacks.3 Because the new Bureau was in the Department of Interior,
Wright checked with his superior, the influential Secretary of Interior, Lucius
Quintius Cincinnatus Lamar. Lamar, a former confederate General, and a former
United States Senator from Mississippi, allegedly told Wright that such a study
would be worthwhile, but that there would be "the devil to pay" in the South,
if he, a Democrat from Mississippi, authorized Wright, a Republican from
Massachusetts, to investigate conditions of blacks. Wright again sought
authorization in 1888 from President Benjamin Harrison, and still later from
President Grover Cleveland. Though the program finally undertaken by the
Department under President William McKinley in 1897 was on a more modest scale
than originally conceived, there is little doubt that Carroll Wright put the
Bureau of Labor in the front line among serious investigators of the conditions
of black Americans.4

The forgotten pioneer

Sometimes relatively unknown individuals
flit across the historical scene, make important contributions, and disappear.
Such a person is George G. Bradford, trailblazer for both the Atlanta
University and Department of Labor black studies. Bradford, a trustee of
Atlanta University from 1895 to 1902, was a young Boston businessman and a
Harvard graduate in finance (class of 1886) who made the study of life among
blacks in America his leisure time activity. Along with the apostle of black
higher education, President Horace Bumstead of Atlanta University, Bradford won
the approval of the trustees of Atlanta University to initiate scientific
studies of black city life.

At the first Atlanta Conference held at the
university in May 1896, Bradford described his plans to study the physical and
moral condition of city blacks which, he said, had not been studied previously
in any extensive or systematic way. Each year graduates of Atlanta would study
a different phase of black life. The first investigation would concern itself
with mortality among blacks in cities, which ran about twice the death rate for
the white city population.5

Bradford invited the Department of Labor to
cooperate with him and tabulate and publish the results. These statistics
became the basis of the first of a pioneer series begun in 1897 by the
Department of Labor dealing with the social and economic conditions of blacks.
Both the Atlanta study and Department of Labor study used data gathered under
Bradford's guidance by about 50 black volunteers, including graduates of black
colleges along with prominent black doctors, ministers, lawyers, and teachers.
According to the Department of Labor, exclusive reliance on black volunteers
made the work quite difficult, but it secured the "interest of the leading
colored men of the country, upon whom would depend the success of any practical
measures of reform that might be suggested by the results of the
investigation." And in the words of one of the investigators, the statistics
were "more than usually accurate because of the investigators' knowledge of the
character, habits and prejudices of the people." 6

Although the Department of Labor Bulletin
was based on the same raw data and covered most of the same subjects as the
first two Atlanta University studies, it was more detailed, more restrained,
and much duller than the Atlanta version. Both the Department of Labor and
Atlanta University used identical material showing excessive mortality rates
among blacks of all ages. Both the Department of Labor and Atlanta University
noted the pathetically high death rate among black and white children under age
5, with the black rate more than twice as high as the white. (The rates were 10
to 20 times as high as modern comparable child-mortality statistics.) Both
studies observed that black women to a greater extent than white women were
breadwinners and of the 1,157 black families studied, 57 percent were supported
wholly or in part by a female head. Both studies provided statistics that
syphilis was more prevalent among blacks than among whites.

By contrast with the Department of Labor,
which presented data with only a little interpretation, the Atlanta University
studies drew lessons to be applied. The Atlanta investigators followed the line
of the "assimilationist" point of view, then in vogue among many educated
blacks. They claimed that though blacks faced socially, politically, and
economically unjust restrictions, many of their problems were
self­inflicted. There were aspects of life in which blacks had an almost
equal chance with whites and in which they could in large measure control their
destiny and solve their own problems. Thus, the Atlanta investigators claimed
that the very high death rate could not be attributed to an unfavorable
environment but "rather to the ignorance of the masses of the people and their
disregard of the laws of health and morality." For them, the sad heritage of
slavery with its "whipped women," separation of wives from husbands, and
assignment of female slaves to other men, explained, but did not excuse. Many
childhood diseases grew out of neglect and licentiousness. "Infants in their
graves will rise up in judgment against this evil and adulterous generation,"
wrote one investigator. "The sine qua non of a change for the better . .
. is a higher social morality." 7

Changing leadership

Although he was not the founder, were it not
for W. E. B. Du Bois, the Atlanta studies and the Department of Labor studies
might have died unnoticed following their publications of the conditions of
city blacks in 1897. Bradford, though he was to remain a trustee of Atlanta
University, could not run a business in Boston and direct studies in Atlanta at
the same time. As he slipped into oblivion, Du Bois not only took his place,
but created a new mold for the study of socioeconomic conditions of blacks.

W. E. B. Du Bois' later and greater fame
came as a militant leader of black aspirations. But his training at German
universities and his Ph. D. at Harvard in the 1890s inculcated in him a
devotion to objectivity which won for him in his early career distinction as a
careful and creative scholar.

The black studies of the period grew out of
the "scientific altruism" of the age. Carroll Wright, George Bradford, and W.
E. B. Du Bois all believed that truth was the most potent medicine for curing
the evils of society. Carroll Wright, for example, argued that labor statistics
was a means of promoting the "material, social, intellectual, and moral
prosperity" of the working people.8 As the range of
Wright's investigations grew broader, it was natural that he would also study
the condition of black Americans. Bradford, in outlining plans for the Atlanta
study, observed that some of the information which the investigators would
uncover might be unpleasant. But, he warned, "if we are to make any progress,
we must have the courage to look unpleasant facts in the face."9 Similarly Du Bois believed that "there is only one sure
basis of social reform and that is Truth  a careful, detailed knowledge
of the essential facts of each social problem. Without this there is no logical
starting place for reform and uplift."10 Racial
prejudice, Du Bois believed, was based on ignorance. The remedy for outrageous
treatment of blacks, based on doctrines of racial inferiority, was truth. Facts
would prove that a man's color limited neither his capacity nor his opportunity
to share in the rewards of society.11

Du Bois and Wright

At the time that Atlanta University and the
Department of Labor were cooperating on their study of the condition of blacks
in various cities, Du Bois was completing his monumental study of Philadelphia
blacks and had resolved to make his life goal the scientific study of black
Americans. He would study what up to that time many concerned citizens merely
discussed.

Du Bois wrote Carroll Wright, who encouraged
him. At Wright's suggestion he thought out methods of studying black industrial
development and then wrote Wright a long letter suggesting preliminary studies
which "would by allaying false notions and prejudices prepare the public mind
for a larger work." Du Bois then suggested 10 different plans of study. Wright
accepted one of the plans but agreed to pay for it only if he were satisfied
with it.12

Shaping black studies

Du Bois submitted to Wright his manuscript
"The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study." Wright liked and paid for
this "first of a series of investigations of small, well‑defined groups
of Negroes in various parts of the country." This little research gem served as
the model for many later studies.

Du Bois described Farmville, in Prince
Edward County, as easy going, gossipy, and conservative. Farmville was a market
town which attracted young country people, while at the same time, it sent boys
and girls to Richmond, Norfolk, Baltimore, and New York. Farmville acted as a
clearing house by training raw country lads in industrial life, and sending
more or less well‑equipped recruits to metropolitan areas.

Du Bois lived with the Farmville Negroes,
joined their social life, visited their homes, and asked each family and
individual 21 questions concerning birth, sex, and age of each family member,
occupation, wages, employment, landownership, and church attendance.

Du Bois reported that 1,350 Farmville blacks
made up about 60 percent of the population. A moderate excess of women over men
indicated some migration of men looking for better economic opportunity. Du
Bois compared the Farmville age distribution with that estimated for blacks in
the United States, with the total U.S. population, and with that of European
countries. He then explained the excessive proportions of old people and of
children under age 15 by people in their prime working ages migrating to cities
and leaving their children with grandparents. This also accounted for the small
proportion of black children in cities like Philadelphia.

In studying marriage he found that the
second generation of freedmen postponed marriage for economic reasons. Delayed
marriage, combined with easy sexual morality a by-product of slavery, reduced
the sober influence of family life. Du Bois found his study of miscegenation
very difficult because of racial intermingling going back for generations.
However, he classified by personal appearance 750 individuals of whom 333 were
apparently of unmixed Negro blood, 219 were brown, while 153 were yellow, or
lighter, evidence of considerable infusion of white blood.

Du Bois reported that illiteracy was
diminishing, but 23 percent of blacks between 10 and 20 years of age could
neither read nor write. In investigating occupations, he found that
entrepreneurs made up about 2 percent of the work force, domestic and
industrial workers about 60 percent, and those not gainfully occupied about 25
percent. The jobs open to black men were limited, and jobs for black women were
restricted to domestic service and housewifery. Du Bois also collected data on
many other subjects such as wages, family income and budgets, value of black
property, secret and beneficial societies, slums, gambling, liquor, local
prostitution, and group, social, and religious life.

Du Bois concluded that studies of
communities like Farmville brought to light good, bad, and indifferent
conditions. One visitor might find Farmville blacks shiftless and lewd. Another
might find them industrious, with steadily advancing educational and moral
standards. These contradictory statements were both partially true, but when
stated without reservation, they were misleading. Though Du Bois found the
degree of sloth and immorality in Farmville dangerous, be believed that an
impartial investigation showed that the industrious black citizen "best
represents, on the whole, the general tendencies of the group." 13

The black belt

While Du Bois was studying blacks in
Farmville for the Department of Labor, he was selected as a professor in
sociology at the University of Atlanta and given the responsibility of
directing a thoroughly scientific investigation of the conditions of black
life. Beginning with its third publication in 1898 on Some Efforts of
American Negroes For Their Own Social Betterment, the Atlanta studies
became the reflection of Du Bois' scholarship and personality. Du Bois later
claimed "without undue boasting that between 1896 and 1920 there was no study
of race problems in America which did not depend in some degree upon the
investigations made at Atlanta University." 14

Du Bois continued Atlanta University's
association with Carroll Wright. One result was a study called "The Negro in
the Black Belt: Some Social Sketches," which the Department of Labor published
in 1899. "The Negro in the Black Belt" was based on notes made by members of
the senior class of Atlanta University who had firsthand knowledge of
conditions among small groups of blacks whom they described. It is among the
poorest works appearing under Du Bois' name because the evidence was skimpy,
and Du Bois drew broad conclusions based more on his personal knowledge than on
the research of his students.15

Labor Department black studies, 1901-03

Although Atlanta University and the
Department of Labor continued to cooperate, they also went their separate
ways.16 Starting in January 1901, the Department
of Labor published four studies by other investigators modeled on Du Bois'
Farmville, Va., report, and a fifth study based on Du Bois' theme of the
Atlanta investigation of black self-betterment.

Of the studies following Du Bois' Farmville
pattern, two were by William Taylor Thom, a Virginia college teacher of history
and English who had written on Shakespeare and Chaucer and who had a Ph. D.
from Johns Hopkins University. Carroll Wright authorized Thom to study first
"The Negroes of Sandy Spring, Maryland," then "The Negroes of Litwalton,
Virginia," and finally "The True Re­formers," a black self-help
enterprise.

Sandy Spring in Montgomery County, Md., had
been settled largely by Quakers who believed slavery was immoral and had
emancipated their slaves before the Civil War. The fact that blacks had been
free for several generations, Thom claimed, warranted a special investigation
into the social and economic effect of freedom. However, his analysis of
property ownership failed to prove that blacks whose families had been free
before the Civil War had acquired more property than those who had been freed
after the Civil War.17

Thom also studied Litwalton, Va., with a
perma­nent population of about 400 blacks and 250 whites. The fortunes of
the area rose and fell with one industry  oystering  in which
relatively large amounts of money could be earned by hard work and good luck.
However, according to Thom, eco­nomic conditions were not good, for blacks
failed to take advantage of opportunities open to them.18

At Carroll Wright's suggestion, Thom
followed his two "Farmville type" reports with a short study of the True
Reformers headquartered at Richmond, Va. Wright asked Thom to investigate their
work because it "illustrates in very positive ways the social and economic
attitudes of the Negro race."19 Thom reported that
"The 'True Reformers' constitutes probably the most remarkable Negro
organization in the country." It was founded in 1881 by an ex-slave with 100
members and a capital of $150. By the end of 1901 it provided death and sick
benefits for 50,000 dues-paying members. Other "affiliated by-products" were a
savings bank, a black economic journal, an old folks' home, cooperative grocery
and general merchandise stores, and a hotel .20

In November 1901, Carroll Wright received
from Dr. J. Bradford Laws a paper on Louisiana planta­tion blacks. He
agreed to pay Dr. Laws $125 for his study and made some changes "to better
enable comparison with former Negro articles which we have published." Law's
report was among the most derogatory of any of the Department of Labor's black
studies.

Sugar plantation Negroes were among the most
backward in the United States. Laws reported con­ditions at Cinclare
Central Factory and Calumet plantation, La., which were much worse than at
Farmville, Litwalton, or Sandy Spring. The illiteracy rate was over 70 percent,
and Louisiana blacks had low earning potential. According to Laws, plantation
blacks never looked to the future and it was difficult to get them to work when
they had a little money. Laws commented that:

They very much dislike the gang system of labor and roam all over the
country seeking jobwork, when they can work as they please.... As a race they
are strong and healthy, but as they abuse themselves, they are not as a general
thing, long‑lived. In trouble they are helpless. They lack confidence in
themselves and are not ingenious in finding expedients. They are not the petty
chicken thieves painted at the north. . . . They appear to have little
intellectual and little moral capacity . . . .21

Du Bois had also recognized the "lowest
economic depth of the black American peasant," but unlike Laws, he explained
that black degradation had grown out of "a slave ancestry and a system of
unrequited toil." He compared the forced labor of blacks on plantations in
Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas to that of serfs under feudalism. When
Louisiana plantation blacks had tried to improve their condition in 1880 and
1886, their strikes were brutally smashed. Laws' lack of perspective may have
resulted in a report which was factually accurate but misleading.22

At the same time that Carroll Wright was
work­ing with Laws on the article on degraded plantation blacks of
Louisiana, he was negotiating with Richard R. Wright, Jr., son of the president
of a black college in Savannah, Ga., who had cooperated with the first
Department of Labor study on the "Condi­tions of the Negro in Various
Cities." Carroll Wright agreed to pay Richard Wright $100 for a "social survey"
of the blacks of Xenia, Ohio.

The Xenia, Ohio, investigation turned out to
be an excellent study. It was the only Department of Labor report on Northern
blacks, many of whom could trace their ancestry to runaway slaves but who had
been free for several generations. Richard Wright's report showed substantial
black economic and social achievements. The degree of literacy was high. There
were two black physicians and several other professionals. About 85
entrepreneurs con­ducted 75 businesses, while other blacks were in skilled
trades, clerical work, or owned farms. Though many blacks remained in
low-status occupations, such as common labor and domestic service,
earn­ings were much higher than in Farmville, Sandy Spring, and other
black communities studied, and blacks owned a considerable amount of
property.23

Negro landholders of Georgia

While Thom, Laws, and Wright were following
the pattern set by Du Bois' Farmville investigation, Du Bois himself was
striking out in new directions. His study of black landholders in Georgia,
based on careful analysis of primary source documents, was made up of
painstakingly developed tables of statistics and maps of Georgia showing black
population county by county for each decade between 1790 and 1890. Landholdings
were analyzed in those counties with substantial black populations, and tables
in­cluded such items as acres of land owned by blacks and assessed
valuation of the land. Du Bois must have slaved away countless hours extracting
information from reports of the Comptroller-Generals of the State of Georgia
which he supplemented with infor­mation obtained from tax receivers of
individual counties who held the manuscript records with their separate lists
of white and black taxpayers. Labor Department officials reviewed and checked
these materials, map by map, arid table by table. The end result was a
dry-as-dust study of changes in land­ownership over decades of time.

Yet even in this monotonous study there is
that powerful undercurrent of black aspiration which distinguishes so much of
Du Bois' work. For Du Bois believed that the relation of blacks to ownership of
the soil was of tremendous significance. By showing how the emancipated black
and his children acquired land, Du Bois felt he was developing an index
measuring the success of the freedman's struggle upward. By 1900, blacks, who
comprised nearly one-half the population of Georgia, owned only 4 percent of
the total value of assessed property in Georgia. To an outsider these meager
holdings might not be strong evidence of economic progress. But Du Bois showed
that whatever little the black had acquired had been done against heavy odds,
and that the value of black holdings was rising both absolutely and
proportionately to white ownership. From these facts, Du Bois concluded
hopefully:

"The Georgia Negro is in the midst of an unfinished cycle
of property accumulation. He has steadily acquired property since the war, and
in fully 100 counties he has continued this steady increase in the last
decade."24

Du Bois used the material gathered for his
Department of Labor study in a less restrained fashion in his famous early
book, The Souls of Black Folk, in which he substituted "throbbing human
souls for statistics." As an example he took Doherty County in the Georgia
black belt, which had no black land­holders on its tax rolls in 1870.
Decade by decade, little by little, blacks acquired land which totaled 15,000
acres in the early 20th century. If America were truly a land of opportunity
for all her sons, Du Bois observed, "we might call such a result small or even
insignificant. But for a few thousand poor ignorant field hands" to acquire
even a little property, meant a "bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening
battle with the world." These 15,000 acres were "proof of no little weight of
the worth and ability of the Negro people." 25

Different points of view

The Department of Labor studies varied not
only in quality but also in point of view. Some of the attitudes expressed in
these studies will strike the present-day reader as unusual. They are reported
here to express the tenor of the times and the attitudes of the investigators.
For example, different investigators showed different attitudes toward sexual
morality. Du Bois described varying moral standards among different groups of
blacks, praised virtuous family life among better class blacks, and explained
the behavior of lower class blacks as a heritage of slavery and the problems of
newly emancipated peoples in coping with the new environment. Thom, though not
basically anti-black, nevertheless, found in Sandy Spring deterioration rather
than progress. Dr. J. Bradford Laws reported that plantation blacks had only
vague "notions of the marriage relations" and he severely criticized their
sexual mores both inside and outside of marriage.

Perhaps the greatest difference in view grew
out of Du Bois' observation in the Farmville study that the "group life of the
Farmville Negroes" was:

"Pervaded by a peculiar hopefulness on the part of the people themselves. No
one of them doubts in the least that one day black people will have all
the rights they are now striving for, and that the Negro will be
recognized among the earth's great peoples."

Richard R. Wright, Jr. agreed. He concluded
that "The Negroes of Xenia are of a hopeful mood almost to unit [sic] . .
. the future will see the Negroes better their condition as their environment
becomes better." By contrast Thom found little hopefulness either in Sandy
Spring or Litwalton. Some more successful blacks saw things getting better, but
some older blacks declared that though the younger set might read better and be
worth more than their fathers, "in manner and character they were distinctly
degenerates. In this opinion the whites of the community seem to coincide." Dr.
Laws was even more derogatory and concluded that "conditions have improved but
little, if any, since freedom was given them." 26

What accounts for such radically different
viewpoints? One factor might be that conditions of blacks were radically
different in such areas as Farmville, Va., Sandy Spring, Md., Calumet
Plantation, La., or Xenia, Ohio. Another factor could be the race and, even
more important, the attitude of the investigator. William Taylor Thom explained
that blacks might respond differently to Du Bois who was "an educated member of
their own race" than to an investigator like himself who was a "member of the
dominant race." Or perhaps another factor might be implicit in the lines of the
black poet Paul Dunbar which Du Bois quoted on the page facing the introduction
of the first study he supervised for Atlanta University:

The sky of brightest grey seems dark To
one whose sky was ever white, To one who never knew a spark
Thro' all his life of love or light, The
greyest cloud seems overbright .27

The decline of black studies

The Department of Labor's investigations of
blacks was making it the leading center of black studies in America. The
Department published more investigations than did Atlanta University; it
presented more points of view; and though it was perennially short of money, it
had fewer budget problems than did the poverty-striken university which had to
rely on voluntary contributions. To a large degree, the Atlanta University
studies depended on questionnaires sent through the mail, which Carroll Wright
three decades earlier had found unreliable. Labor Department studies were based
on firsthand investigations and primary source documents. Moreover, the
Department did not suffer the disability of Atlanta University. Du Bois
explained: "We never 'belonged'; we remained unrecognized in learned societies
and academic groups. We rated merely as Negroes studying Negroes. . . ." By
contrast, Carroll Wright definitely "belonged." He was a giant in academia,
president of the American Statistical Association, and influential in other
scholarly societies .28

But suddenly the Department of Labor lost
interest in black studies. One reason was that the fight to deprive black
Southerners of their rights was reaching a climax. Following the 1896 decision
of Plessy v. Ferguson, establishing the validity of "separate but equal"
facilities, nearly all Southern States passed "Jim Crow" laws enforcing racial
segregation. As Du Bois explained, "a legal caste system based on race and
color, had been openly grafted on the democratic constitution of the United
States." 29 Calm discussion of economic and social
conditions of blacks was becoming difficult.

A simpler explanation of loss of interest in
black studies was the shortage of money and the demotion early in 1903 of the
independent Department of Labor to a mere bureau in the newly created
Department of Commerce and Labor, in which the Secretary had "authority to
rearrange the statistical work of the bureaus" in the Department. Carroll
Wright was ready to quit to become President of Clark College, but at the
request of President Theodore Roosevelt, hung on for 2 years longer as
Commissioner of Labor. 30

The subordinated Bureau of Labor published
only one black study, "The Negroes of Xenia, Ohio," which had already been in
progress before its demotion. Wright's successor, Charles P. Neill, wrote Dr.
Carl Kelsey of the University of Pennsylvania, that he "had not intended to
continue that series of studies on Negroes."31

The Lowndes County investigation

But Du Bois, still working on the premise
that "truth will make us free" was tireless in his efforts for further
investigations of conditions of the American black. He sought support from
Carroll Wright and bombarded him with plans. Wright found particularly
appealing Du Bois' proposal to study social and economic conditions of blacks
in Lowndes County, Ala., in the heart of the black belt.

Wright blew hot and cold on the Lowndes
County study. The following are excerpts of some of Carroll Wright's letters to
W.E.B. Du Bois:

"I am not certain now whether I can take up
any of the subjects which you suggest, but before deciding definitely I would
like to know your idea of the first subject which you name that is, a study of
conditions in Lowndes County, Alabama.32

"I think I may be able to authorize the
Lowndes County study, provided I can pay for the report you make after the
Month of June, 1903.33

"I do not believe it will be possible for us
in the near future to take up the question of the Lowndes County Negroes. This
is a financial question with us at the present time."34

"At the time I wired you at Atlanta, we had
some funds available . . . and not being able to get in touch with you, we
closed an agreement for (other) work . . . if we have anything available at the
end of the present fiscal year, I will be glad to take up the matter
with you at that time. . . ."

Early in February 1906 Du Bois met with Neill
and must have been very persuasive, for Neill shifted somewhat from his
position against more black studies, but he stated that Du Bois' would "be the
only study of the Negro I would care to have made." On February 16, 1906, Neill
rejected a black study by Monroe N. Work, on the grounds that he had already
made "partial arrangements" for a study of black workers. On May 7, 1906, Neill
wrote to Richard R. Wright, Jr., rejecting a study he had suggested because of
plans to have Du Bois make a "comprehensive study" of a black community. Neill
received a comprehensive outline from Du Bois and met with him in Washington in
June of 1906. Then followed a series of letters in the summer of 1906 from
Neill to Du Bois in which the funds for the study were promised and deadlines
set.

After 5 years of frustration and delay, Du
Bois began what he considered the most important survey of black Americans up
to that time. Du Bois wrote in his Autobiography:

"I wanted to take Lowndes County, Alabama,
in a former slave state with a large majority of Negroes, and make a social and
economic study from the earliest times when documents were available, down to
the present; supplemented by studies of official records and a present
house-to-house canvass of Negroes.... Helped by Monroe Work. and R. R.
Wright and a dozen or more local employees, I settled at the Calhoun
School and began the study.

"It was carried on with all sorts of
difficulties, including financing and with the greeting of some of my
agents with shotguns in certain parts of the county; but it was eventually
finished. The difficult schedules were tabulated and I made chronological maps
of the division of the land; I considered the distribution of Labor; the
relation of landlord and tenant; the political organization and the family life
and the distribution of the population ."35

The scope and difficulty of the study is
borne out by extracts from Neill's letters to Du Bois in the fall of 1906 which
reveal that 6,000 families were to be studied and 10,000 copies of the Lowndes
County schedules ordered printed. In addition, one or two agents from the
Bureau were to be sent to Lowndes County to examine records of mortgages,
liens, and crime, and records of the justice of the peace. These agents were
also to secure information from white men regarding politics and sexual
morality and were to take a census of white workers. Neill appeared a bit
uncertain about the use of information collected and on October 17, he wrote Du
Bois:

"I am not quite sure that the schedules
which you have used for a colored census will serve for the census of white
laborers; if not, I would suggest that you send me a form of schedule for this
purpose at once."

Recognizing the problem of resistance, Neill
on November 7 wrote:

"I note what you say with reference to the
difficulty of securing schedules in certain outlying districts, and if this
difficulty is great and likely to arouse considerable antagonism, the canvass
of families in these districts may be abandoned. Nevertheless, I trust that you
will make the canvass as complete as possible."

In the same letter, he assured the author
that the law division of the Bureau had begun compiling laws and court
decisions for Du Bois on selected subjects, a task Neill found "very
considerable."

Aside from a letter 2 weeks later telling Du
Bois that he would have to have a special map made because those commercially
available were inadequate, there is no further record because the method of
filing correspondence was changed in a way which made it more difficult for
later researchers to trace.

Du Bois, in his Autobiography, gives
a skimpy version of his side of the story:

The report was finished by hand
with no copy, and rushed to Washington. I was criticized and I spent some
weeks there in person, revising and perfecting it. It was finally accepted by
the government, and $2,000 paid for it, most of which went back to the
University. . . .

I finally approached the Bureau and
tried to find out when it would be published and was told the Bureau had
decided not to publish the manuscript, since it touched on political
matters. I was astonished and disappointed, but after a year I went back
to them again and asked if they would allow me to have the manuscript since
they were not going to use it. They told me it had been destroyed!
(Italics added.) 36

So ended the early Department of Labor black
studies effort. More than a decade elapsed before the Bureau again studied
conditions of black workers.

An exercise in speculation

Why, after so major an effort, was Du Bois'
work destroyed? One reason may have been that the Bureau of Labor was already
under attack because of its reports on child labor which some Southern
Congressmen charged were "vile and slanderous upon our people." Senator Lee S.
Overman of North Carolina later told his Senate colleagues that he protested to
the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Charles Nagel, who promised that some of
the material would not be published.37

The problem the Bureau of Labor faced can be
surmised from the experience of the Department of Justice. A U.S. attorney
described a case involving J. W. Dixon, sheriff of Lowndes County, the same
county Du Bois was studying. When the Grand Jury investigated an incredibly
brutal case of forced labor, "five Dixon brothers rode up on their horses at 12
o'clock Saturday night" to warn one of the grand jurors "what to expect."
"These Dixons," the U.S. attorney observed, "are men of the highest political
and financial influence .They are large planters and control a great deal
of labor....They are said to have killed several men. It is believed that
witnesses are practically compelled to perjure their souls because they fear
their lives " The Dixons were not indicted.38
In the light of its own and Department of Justice experiences, Bureau of Labor
officials might have doubts about publishing Du Bois' investigation of social
and economic conditions in Lowndes County.

Another difficulty may have been Du Bois'
growing militancy. While working in Lowndes County, he received news of the
Atlanta riot of 1906 in which white mobs with police support invaded the
Atlanta ghetto, killed four blacks, and wantonly destroyed black property. "I
took the next train for Atlanta and my family," he wrote. A "poor Negro in
Central Georgia...had been lynched, and...his knuckles were on exhibition at a
grocery store." How could a scholar remain detached, Du Bois asked, when his
black brothers were being starved, beaten, and lynched?39He expressed his bitterness in his Litany of
Atlanta, written on the train from Lowndes County to Atlanta:

Du Bois' attacks against Booker T.
Washington may have been a factor in the rejection of his study. Not only did
many blacks consider Washington as their peerless leader, but whites also
treated him as the spokesman of black aspirations. But Du Bois challenged
Washington's implicit acceptance of black inferiority in return for modest
economic rewards. President Theodore Roosevelt used Booker T. Washington as his
power broker for Federal awards to blacks. Both Washington and Roosevelt
considered Du Bois dangerous. And Booker T. Washington has been charged with
using this power to throttle opponents. In an era of racial hatred, it would
not have been hard to suppress an investigation of politics, living conditions,
crime, landlord‑tenant relations, debt, economic peonage, miscegenation,
and sexual morality in a county in the heart of the black belt.

Statistical suicide?

Du Bois blamed the Bureau of Labor and
Commissioner of Labor, Charles Neill, for the destruction of his Lowndes County
study. That the Bureau and its Commissioner would do such a thing seems
unbelievable. After all, the foundation upon which the Bureau was built was
faithful investigation and fearless reporting. The mishandling of statistics,
Carroll Wright said, was a "crime" punished by the "unwritten law" which
sentences the "man who prostitutes the cause of humanity."41

Although Charles Neill did not attain the stature of Carroll Wright
whose place he took, he was a thoughtful scholar with a reputation for ability,
integrity, and courage. He was a leader in the Catholic movements for ethical
social conduct. He had backed Du Bois while he was investigating in Lowndes
County. During his term as Commissioner, the Bureau investigated working
conditions of women and children and industrial accidents. Neill created so
many enemies because of his reports that his reconfirmation as Commissioner of
Labor Statistics was twice rejected by the Senate .42

Yet as incongruous as it might seem, Du Bois
was able to make a strong case in his charges against Neill. In the climate of
the times, Du Bois' study may have been too hot to handle.

Scholars like to say "tell the truth and let
the chips fall where they may." This is possible under conditions where reason
can prevail. But sometimes when human passions are involved, people do not want
their convictions challenged by fact. Such was the issue of the race relations
in 1907 and 1908.

In this atmosphere Du Bois in part recanted
his earlier philosophy. "I regarded it as axiomatic that the world wanted to
learn the truth," he wrote. "This was of course but a young man's idealism, not
by any means false, but also never universally true." Without abandoning
scholarship, Du Bois, in addition, became a propagandist for black social
equality.

Neill also, like Du Bois, believed in the
search for truth. But did he also have his limits? Did he consider the problems
of publishing Du Bois' report tantamount to statistical suicide for the Bureau?
Did Neill think he could surrender on one front and still continue objective
research in other areas? The fact remains that the Bureau's failure to publish
Du Bois' report or to return the data to him, led Du Bois to point an accusing
finger at Neill. In his Autobiography, Du Bois wrote:

"The successors of Carroll Wright deliberately destroyed this piece of
my best sociological work."43

Jonathan Grossman was the Chief
Historian for the U.S. Department of Labor. This article originally appeared in
the Monthly Labor Review of June 1974.

NOTES

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, The
Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life From the Last
Decade of its First Century (New York, International Publishers, 1968), p.
204.

6. Conditions of the
Negro in Various Cities," Bulletin of the Department of Labor, 10 (May 1897),
pp. 257-59; Social and Physical Condition of the Negroes in Cities (Atlanta,
Ga., Atlanta University, 1897), Atlanta University Publications, 2, p. 5.

7. Social and Physical
Condition of the Negroes, pp. 9, 18, 19, 20-26; and "Conditions of the Negro in
Various Cities," pp. 267-81.

8. Carroll D. Wright, "The
Growth and Purposes of Bureaus of Statistics of Labor," address before the
American Social Science Association, Sept. 3, 1888 (Boston, 1888), pp.
14-18.